… most organizations still rely on a way of working designed over 100 years ago for the challenges and opportunities of the industrial age. Team structures support routine and static jobs. Siloed, command and control systems enable senior leadership to drive efficiency and predictability at the expense of free information flow, rapid learning, and adaptability.

It’s O.K. if some people don’t like you. In fact, as a leader, if don’t have some, you have a severe case of NTBL.

There is one person that you really need to have like you in order to reduce your NTBL and that is you! The affirmation you need should come from yourself, not others.

The process to reduce NTBL requires only two things. (Simple but hard.) First, you need to define what success is—both long term and short term. Then you need to shoot for those objectives and pretty much ignore feedback or condemnation from those who you don’t need to listen to.

1) Maintain a Constant Dialogue with Key StakeholdersThe leaders who are least surprised by the future tend be those with the broadest radar. They are always exploring both the issues of today and the factors that could shape and disrupt the future. They do their data gathering in the most natural way possible – by talking constantly to customers, prospects, suppliers, partners, shareholders, competitors, industry associations, business networks, advisors, industry analysts, commentators, journalists and – most importantly – their own staff. They probe for ideas and developments that could accelerate quickly and for weak signals of potentially big changes to come.

Ecosystems — instead of marketing cloud suites vs. best-of-breed point solutions, we will have the best of both: open platforms that serve as stable foundations, augmented by large ecosystems of specialized third-party apps that are more deeply integrated.Experts — the lines between software vendors and professional services firms will blur: software companies will offer more expert services; services firms will automate and bottle their expertise in code.(Citizen) Engineers — in a digital world where every company asymptotically becomes a “software business,” organizations will extend commerical platforms with customized customer experience apps and business process logic, many via “citizen developers.”

To move the Brand NPS needle, actions and improvements are needed right across the customer journey, however the contact center is shown to have a disproportionate impact on customer sentiment for those customers who need to contact you and through word of mouth on those that haven’t contacted you. Using a combination of root cause analysis and methods to improve agent self-awareness of their role and impact on customer sentiment, the contact center can systematically improve the customer experience, and so can drive an overall improvement in both Transactional and Brand NPS.

Engagement — why growth is generated by engaging every employee in understanding and managing their own ripple-effect on customer experience.

Momentum — why growth is generated by rewarding proactive teamwork that halts customer experience issue recurrence and prevents issue occurrence, connecting the dots between what teams can control and big-picture metrics.

Action — why growth is generated by cross-organizational collaboration in regularly cadenced voice-of-the-customer actioning and innovating workshops with value and closed-loop communication to the customer base.

What Makes a Winning StrategyA strategy is not a plan. A strategy is a statement of intent with very specific properties. To qualify as a strategy, the statement must describe a focus for activity and an implicit or explicit set of conditions for an end state that, when successfully executed, guarantee the organization will achieve its desired goals. Good strategies ensure that the goal will be achieved irrespective of any reasonably foreseeable competitive activity or probable change to an arena activity. A well-crafted strategy, successfully executed, will guarantee a desired outcome irrespective of anything but a black swan event completely outside the scope of even robust scenario planning.

In addition, when expressed, all good strategies manifest several key characteristics. They are:

easily understood and explainedprovide sufficient detail regarding a key purpose to provide clear prioritization and guidance but are not so detailed as to restrict how teams and leaders with distributed authority choose to executeare a useful tool in decision making and resource allocation in all specific areas of activity conducted by an organizationmake self-evident or intuitive what a stakeholder should not do as well as what they should doallow for arena specific strategies to be defined that are universally aligned with the overall higher level or organizational strategyOften when I put forward this definition, people balk at the notion that an outcome can be “guaranteed”. They then become positively disparaging when they see “irrespective of competitive activity…or changes to a market.” But great strategies, and there are many examples throughout both military and business history, have always satisfied this definition. While black swan events and poor execution can always lead to failure, the goal of anyone crafting a strategy, at any level, should be the simplest expression of a method paired with an achievable end state or directed purpose that will guarantee success.

Examples of Winning StrategiesLet’s look at some examples, one from geopolitical history and several commercial examples. First, the Allied strategy of WWII. This was simple and clear; “Self-preservation. Starve the enemies war machine.” This strategy meets all of the criteria of our definition. Despite setbacks, problems with execution, and fierce competitive activity, by the end of the war, the average Allied soldier had 2 tons of supply accessible to them or on the way in the supply chain. The average Axis soldier had less than 2 kilos. Victory for the Allies had been made inevitable long before hostilities ended. It’s just that neither side realized. Despite changing conditions during the war, this strategy did not change while arena specific plans changed or were adapted regularly.

For the following discussion, let’s delineate the business model innovation process into three generic steps: Discovery – Validation – Scaling. As general guiding principle in the discovery and validation phase, Marcel Bogers et al. advise to not settle too quickly on organizational structure of emerging business models. They write:

The lesson for any organization wanting to explore new business models is to not settle too quickly on a structure for the new business. In fact, the organizational structure can more usefully be thought of as one of the essential building blocks of the business model – that is, as an aspect of the new business that needs to be fully explored and experimented with before you can learn what works best. […]

The business model canvas framework developed by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur has become a very popular way to understand the potential building blocks of business models. […] However, organizational designs and the associated organizational tensions that emerge during the process of business model exploration are not well addressed by the existing tools. Companies exploring new business models may not fully recognize that these tensions will almost inevitably emerge and thus may be ill-prepared to manage them. Understanding these tensions should help in managing the challenges of concurrent business models.

Avoiding quick settlement on structure being one of those key areas of tension to be managed, two others have become apparent aside:

Balance top management support and experimentationPower struggle for resources (with existing business model)To provide the required space, time and support for proper business model exploration, Saul Kaplan has insistently stressed the setup of dedicated Sandboxes – with direct sponsorship of the CEO – as being imperative.

There are three trends that are changing the nature of martech. They will catalyze the end of the “first golden age of martech” and lay the foundation for a second golden age that will be much larger, but likely look quite different.

Ecosystems — instead of marketing cloud suites vs. best-of-breed point solutions, we will have the best of both: open platforms that serve as stable foundations, augmented by large ecosystems of specialized third-party apps that are more deeply integrated.Experts — the lines between software vendors and professional services firms will blur: software companies will offer more expert services; services firms will automate and bottle their expertise in code.(Citizen) Engineers — in a digital world where every company asymptotically becomes a “software business,” organizations will extend commerical platforms with customized customer experience apps and business process logic, many via “citizen developers.”

Employees want to know what’s happening and why, in a direct way. Don’t be evasive or try to “spin” messages to employees. Tell them what you know – and what you don’t know – as soon as you know it. Chances are, you may be waiting too long after getting key information to communicate it and that’s when employees fill the void with their own meaning.

2. Spell out your expectations

People rise to the expectations set for them. Many problems in business are caused by employees not understanding what their employers need and what their bosses expect of them. Great bosses have codified and discussed with employees what they can expect from their boss, and in turn, what the boss expects of them. Great bosses have ongoing conversations with their employees about whether expectations are being met, and/or to clarify expectations.

3. Listen and invite feedback

Employees are more likely to support what they help to create. Enhance the dialogue by asking for input, genuinely seeking employees’ questions and perspective. You’re likely to learn something important when you focus on real, two-way conversations.

It’s time to change the way work gets done in the enterprise, if we want to stay ahead. The workforce of the future expects organizations to use new technologies that improve communication, workflow and ideation.

The first step is to identify the different types of learning you should focus on. The ones that are most beneficial to today’s companies are as follows:

Continuous Improvement: Learning how to avoid making the same mistakes twiceCourse Correcting: Figuring out how to get plans back on track as quickly as possibleCapability Building: Developing new company skills and competencies needed for growth Employee Development: Tapping into the full potential of your most important resource

Theories on motivation stress that a great goal should be desirable and feasible – both at the same time. A business opportunity is just the same: it should be highly desirable, i.e., offer a high potential for value creation, yet also highly feasible, i.e., bear limited challenges in capturing this value. So when you assess different opportunities for your company, make sure to evaluate these two key factors. Your aim is to focus on a high potential, low challenge opportunity.

Universities are often a microcosm of the larger societal trends and issues. Handling those tensions and dynamics equips one with a unique understanding of what the future holds. In other words, university presidents are operating in the future — which may seem counterintuitive given the widespread portrayal of university leaders as risk-averse traditionalists. The truth is that they are in touch with and shaping our future workers, leaders, and consumers as well as the environment that all our organizations and companies will be functioning in. The insights of university presidents into the emerging workforce — and the next generation of leaders — are invaluable for the business sector.

Intrapreneurship and innovation are intrinsically linked ideas when you’re talking about corporate innovation programs. Whether you’re calling it a corporate accelerator, an organizational incubator, an innovation management program, you’re relying on the thinkers, creators and mobilizers to share their inspiration and find ways to integrate that value into your organization.Perhaps the best articulated difference between the two terms came up in a presentation that I saw recently from Dr. Irena Yashin-Shaw (innovation and creativity specialist who authored Leading in the Innovation Age). She quoted one of her students who said, “Innovation is a word for the organization, whereas intrapreneurialism is a word for the individual – it resonates because it is engaging and empowering.”

It is this very focus that defines a lot of IdeaScale’s product development work. We often say that we require our product be rigorous on process and generous towards people. What that means is that we acknowledge the engine of the entire innovation program is actually people and that we need to find ways to empower them, connect them, and inspire them in scalable ways. That work needs to be easy and delightful.

This is also what is required of innovation managers. They need to remember that an individual is at the center of their success and so it is absolutely imperative that they invest in the professional development of their crowd of employees. And when it comes to innovation, there are eight distinct skill sets that need to be nurtured at an organizational level. So it pays to test their skill level and develop training programs that help level-up those skills throughout an organization.

With every company I have engaged with, I see this challenge: the CEO is so involved in the business and working in their comfort zone that they can’t see the wider perspective. They’re so in the business that they’re not working on it. Growth suffers as a result.

Most CEOs are not aware of the problem. They’re just completing activities, like arranging chairs on the deck of the Titanic while the ship is sinking.

It’s also hard to self-diagnose. And, you’re not going to hear about it from people on the inside. So, to be clear and as helpful as possible:

If your business is not at least tracking with the industry growth rate, there’s a problem, and it’s with your company. It may be time to step back and work on your business.

The Tech-Focused CEOOne CEO and founder I worked with in a $10 million technology firm came from a technical background. He addressed the marketplace in a way that was comfortable for him, directing his efforts to other developers.

Everything he did from speaking engagements to podcasts and blogs addressed developers and developer issues. Unfortunately, the developers were not making the buying decision. The CIO's and other executive-level decision makers purchased the solution.

He was sitting at a low level of revenue but didn’t know how to grow. Looking at it from the outside, the remedy was easy to see. With marketing, you don’t devote all your energies to influencers. You devote them primarily to buyers.

When you’re working on your business, you look at it strategically and say, ‘Who do we sell to?” You tailor the message, everything, to the buyers primarily and to influencers secondarily. But he had it switched.

Unparalleled insight into your business strategyYour customers are the best (and surprisingly most often overlooked) resource to provide input on your company’s overall direction and business strategies. Customers should be able to advise you on the products and services they desire, what they would pay for them, and how they want them delivered.

After all, everything you do is designed to appeal to their needs. There really is no one more qualified to counsel you on how to best target, approach, and serve your client base.

Your council can provide invaluable direction regarding matters such as:

Which markets to pursueHow to best capitalize on market trendsWhat customer pain points to addressWhich companies to partner with or acquireHow to best exploit competitors’ weak pointsHow to position your company for optimal advantage

Customers Are Switching Over to MobileThe state of retail is seen as a tug of war between brick-and-mortar or physical stores and e-commerce websites. However, technology has stepped in to lend a helping hand so businesses can have equal footing with their online counterparts.

Since 86% of US retail sales still happen in brick-and-mortar stores and 53% of all buying decisions are now influenced by digital technology, a growing number of physical stores now having an online store. And with more shoppers switching over to mobile, it’s crucial for any business to ensure that its eCommerce counterpart is mobile friendly and fully responsive. Just look at how American department store chain Macy’s successfully made the transition.

Customers Want a Seamless Shopping ExperienceThe rise of online shopping has made a huge impact on customer expectations, including how consumers learn about a certain product. They now go to eCommerce websites to read about detailed product information and expect the same kind of service in physical stores.

To provide this to customers, retailers must up their tech game and go mobile. This would help their customers find products in-store and even skip the check-out line on their way out. This kind of shopping experience is already being delivered by Amazon Go where customers enter the store and take the products they wish to buy from the shelves before walking out.

The technology works by using cameras and sensors strategically placed across the store. Every time you take an item off a shelf, computers keep track of them and place them into your virtual cart. And as soon as you leave, an app charges your credit card once you cross the checkout sensors. This kind of seamless shopping has caught the attention of other companies, and they’re about to take on a similar approach this year.

They’re Going Multi-ChannelKnowing how and where consumers shop is what retailers want to find out about their behavior. But now, a huge part of this behavior involves utilizing multiple channels in making a purchase. For instance, customers may instinctively look up the items they need on Amazon, but they’ll also visit physical stores to explore prices and browse other similar products.

An eMarketer report states that 65% of consumers expect consistency of service on both digital and physical stores, with 55% of them expecting ‘frictionless flow of information between multiple channels.’ The availability of other channels not only opens more possibilities for customers to get what they want, but it also boosts the revenue of retailers. According to a National Retail Federation report, multichannel shoppers spend $93 more than their single-channel counterparts over a Thanksgiving weekend. This means the age of buying an item through a single channel is over.

When you create new value propositions and growth you need to focus on high-value customer jobs. These are not necessarily the most important jobs from your customers’ perspective. They are the most promising jobs from your perspective as a solutions provider.High-value customer jobs are characterized by the following, they are:

Important: When customer’s success or failure to get the job done leads to essential gains or extreme pains, respectively. Examples are managing the security risk of an ecommerce website, or designing and implementing the strategy at a company.Tangible: When the pains or gains related to a job can be felt or experienced immediately or often. Examples are traffic during your daily commute, or managing a constantly overflowing email inbox.Unsatisfied: When current value propositions don’t help to relieve pains or create desired gains in a satisfying way. Maybe the desired value proposition doesn’t even exist. Examples are the inexistent cure for hangovers, or calorie-free chocolate.Lucrative: When many people have the job with related pains and gains or when a small number of customers are willing to pay a premium. An example of the former is listening to music on the go. An example of the latter are rare diseases for which customers or insurers are willing to pay a premium.

Psychological safety is fundamental to effective agile decision making and successful innovation for several reasons. Both agility and innovation rely on (1) an accurate and collective understanding of internal and external conditions, (2) open and objective consideration of diverse perspectives to reduce the now universal risk of volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous situations, and (3) an acceptance that sometimes the best path forward in uncertainty is to make a decision knowing that it might not work out. In other words, it has to be safe to be wrong, make mistakes, and learn. This is only possible where open objective dialogue occurs and members feel safe in the knowledge that they will not be ostracised for dissenting opinions or taking actions that ultimately prove problematic.

In contrast, whether due to narrow-minded or arrogant leaders at one end of the spectrum or impossible cultural norms that try to ensure that no one ever feels hurt, questioned, or challenged at the other end of the spectrum, psychologically unsafe environments undermine progress. At their worst, people fear for their job when they speak out and thus at best self-edit what they say and at worst avoid raising critical issues at all. The trendy imperative to insist “culture über alles” (“culture overall”), compels employees to conform to cultural norms at the expense of substance in an effort to not be seen as difficult. Being liked and welcomed are more important than either near-term results or long-term learning. Contractors almost universally edit their commentary to reduce the risk of not getting renewed. As a result, potential risks are not raised, good ideas not shared, and projects with known shortcomings are endorsed or worse still not killed off long past reasonable certainty they should be.

Google and the U.S. Military have done extensive research on what makes for effective teams and operational units. Contrary to the hype about self-organizing self-directed teams, effective teams have leaders. In some cases they are formal. In others they are emergent. But in all cases these leaders have specific characteristics. One of the most important characteristics is that in addition to being clearly committed to the team’s success, they seek out and consider diverse thinking and views. Often engaging in open and challenging discussions about opinions that differ from their own. Importantly they do so open-mindedly and fully prepared to be convinced that an alternate perspective is superior to the one they started with.

The modern trends of contractors over employees, open plan offices, hot desking, continually temporary assignments, self-managed or self-organized teams, avoidance of direct and meaningful feedback when it is critical, and short employment periods are all contrary to the formation of psychologically safe teams as well as the true acceptance of diversity. The benefits of diversity for an organization are not derived through the cosmetic process of recruiting individuals with diverse origin stories. Few benefits are gained if diverse recruits simply compete to conform to a corporate culture by suppressing dissenting or challenging opinions. The benefits of diversity are derived when those with different views generate reasoned open consideration of diverse perspectives without fear of offense, social ostracism, or diminished chance of promotion.

To be effectively agile organizations must learn from experience, manifest practiced objectivity, be open to challenging engagement, and have accountability as cultural norms and organizational priorities. This is not possible if people are labelled difficult, looked over for promotion, or marginalized if they put the truth ahead of obsequies civility. Nor can it occur when being called out for making a mistake is so accompanied by implied trauma that embarrassment and withdrawal are implied expectations. When getting called out for mistakes is (1) the norm, (2) the focus is on cause, effect, and what can be done to improve the outcome next time, and (3) no one fears a loss of status or belonging as a result of critical feedback, no one thinks twice about giving or receiving it. Instead, they think about the lessons to be learned and the steps to be taken to apply or assimilate the solution. The best way to make accountability, objectivity, learning, and psychological safety the defining cultural norms is to confer status exclusively on those that identify, apply, and share lessons. When this is the case, constructive criticism, even from juniors directed at the most senior levels, becomes a powerful ally for all leaders. Such cultural norms are also the best way to achieve consistent innovation success and organizational agility.

For more details on useful tools and methods, a better understanding of consumer decision making, innovation success, how to remove bias from internal decision processes, craft more effective and safer incentive programs and strategies, or for more details on the science of Motivational Drive Theory, (1) read A Deeper Truth: The new science of innovation, human choice, and societal scale behavior (2) sign up and read other installments of Tim Stroh’s Value In 60 Seconds or Under 3 Minutes email and blog, or (3) if you would like assistance make contact to arrange a discussion, workshops, keynote presentation, or services engagement via LinkedIn (http://linkedin.com/in/timstroh) or tim@strohinternational.com.

easily understood and explainedprovide sufficient detail regarding a key purpose to provide clear prioritization and guidance but are not so detailed as to restrict how teams and leaders with distributed authority choose to executeare a useful tool in decision making and resource allocation in all specific areas of activity conducted by an organizationmake self-evident or intuitive what a stakeholder should not do as well as what they should doallow for arena specific strategies to be defined that are universally aligned with the overall higher level or organizational strategy

A leader’s number one job is to create clarity in their organization. Lack of clarity leads to lack of accountability and ultimately frustration and conflict.

As much as we’d like to think we aren’t, humans are animals. Social animals. In the wild social animals are led by an alpha who provides guidance (usually in the form of violence) on what is acceptable behavior in the pack.

Animals also have no capacity to process language so all of their clues about what is acceptable and how to be accountable come from the alpha’s behavior.

When an alpha (in the wild or in business) is unclear about the behavior that is acceptable and/or the consequences for not showing the right behaviors, the animals in their group will demonstrate the behaviors that they believe the alpha wants. If the alpha doesn’t punish or correct those behaviors, their group members will continue doing those activities until their alpha erupts with frustration, which they caused.

With humans, our team members filter the behaviors they believe their leader wants from them through the filter of their hopes, dreams, fears, and comfort zone. A recurring theme in my coaching sessions with the leaders I work with is “why aren’t my people doing (behavior expected)?!” The answer is usually “because they didn’t know you wanted them to do that and that behavior is outside their current comfort zone.”

You’re in the dark. The first step in changing any habit is recognizing that you have it. This is harder than it seems with clarity since it lies in that middle of what’s being communicated and what’s being received. I might think an idea is perfectly clear but fail to get it across to you. You, in turn, may think you understand something but don’t. Communication and repeating back your understanding is key.

You lack curiosity. “Why?” is the most frequent question children ask and reflects our innate desire to know. But as we grow up, our curiosity is drummed out. This is a shame. Curiosity pushes us to try things people say we can’t accomplish or to differentiate between two options. Fortunately, organizations are filled with people with dormant curiosity waiting to be sparked. With a bit of coaxing and the cultivation of a welcoming culture, they can reinvigorate this curiosity where questions are both encouraged and rewarded.

You think you know it all. Many leaders think they know, but they don’t, and they aren’t going to ask. Their hubris gets in the way and keeps them from seeing the full picture. Fortunately, mindsets are malleable. People can overcome their hubris and adopt a growth mindset with reflection, coaching, and some work on the self. They can choose to let go of their belief that they know everything and start asking more curiosity-driven questions of more people.

Why? People don’t feel safe telling the truth because they don’t think it is smart or safe to do so. Many leaders believe that to be effective and successful, they need to be smarter than the next guy, fight for their area of the business, and not show vulnerability. This mentality creates a lack of trust, collaboration, and common ownership for a greater goal—and ultimately greatly slows down execution speed.

The reliability of ‘private’ blockchainsThe term “blockchain” lacks a common definition. Many confuse blockchain—a decentralized, distributed-ledger technology—with cryptocurrencies or other accounting systems. But Bitcoin is one of some 1,600 digital currencies and tokens. It runs on a blockchain system, and users receive bitcoins as rewards for doing work on the system. This is the most mature application of blockchain, and the one with which many companies and investors are most familiar.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.